Acclaimed filmmaker speaks with students

'Lemme tell you something'Director, professor, and documentarian Tom Shadyac came to William & Mary last week, where he treated students and faculty to his own unique blend of philosophy and advice.
Photo by Stephen Salpukas

To hear him talk about it, one would think that acclaimed
Hollywood director and newly reformed documentarian Tom Shadyac’s teaching
methods were a perpetual cycle of talking and eating. The screenwriting class he
teaches at Pepperdine University begins with coffee, includes pizza, and
culminates in a “final” wherein he takes his students out for a meal and a sit-down
conversation that could last several hours. It may sound unorthodox, but this
new methodology jives with the new life the filmmaker is trying to create for
himself, one based on sharing findings, feelings, and conversations, especially
with students.

“I like to see who students are and where they are,”
the filmmaker said before a talk with about three dozen William & Mary
students during his visit to campus last week. “I think too often we talk at
students instead of letting them tell us.”

It was just such a conversation that brought Shadyac
to Williamsburg this week. The Virginia native and his production team have
been traveling the country since July, holding screenings for the director’s
latest film and first documentary, “I Am,” with a showing at Colonial Williamsburg’s
Kimball Theatre Tuesday rounding out the most recent leg of their tour. William
& Mary students got the chance to talk with the director during the time he
was here, to learn more about the message of the movie, and the man behind it.

Shadyac, who is perhaps more commonly associated
with the Jim Carrey flicks he’s directed such as “Ace Ventura” and “Liar Liar” had
a life-changing experience a few years back when a severe mountain biking
accident left the filmmaker with severe post-concussion syndrome. Stricken with
chronic pain and very conscious of his own mortality, Shadyac says in his
documentary that he remembers wanting more than anything else to share the
things he’d learned, “from one generation to another.”

“I want to leave you with this,” he said to a group
of students gathered to hear him speak in Blow Hall the day before the
screening. “And do with it what you will.”

At face value, the documentary is about the
pervasive culture of disconnectedness which the filmmaker feels is threatening
to define humanity’s role in the world. On a more visceral level though, Shadyac’s
movie is about talking to people and opening up a dialogue, whether it’s with a
21st Century luminary, a next door neighbor, or a mother left
homeless by an earthquake halfway around the world.

The film features a number of notable thinkers such
as Noam Chomsky and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, most of whom are asked at one
point about their familiarity with the “Ace Ventura” series, with the result
being a “no” or a baffled look almost every time.

Once he gets done quizzing them about his film
career though, Shadyac takes the time to ask these great minds of the modern
age the two central questions behind his movie: What is wrong in the world, and
what can be done to fix it? The exchanges that ensue form the backbone for the
entire film.

To help get these conversations out into the world
Shadyac and his two production assistants Nicole Pritchett and Harold Mintz, a
former student and a childhood friend respectively, took to the road, showing
off the fruits of their labor and getting students, such as film and psychology
double-major Alyssa Weinberger ’11, involved in the dialogue.

“I think he hit on a lot of really interesting
research that's been done recently, especially in the fields of noetics and
quantum physics and how they're just now starting to basically prove what
Eastern religions have been saying forever,” said Weinberger, an aspiring filmmaker
“I also appreciated the way he tended not to proselytize, opting instead for
opening up a dialogue.”

Megan Hermida ’11, also a film major doubling with
English, agreed, adding “I thought he was very
eloquent. He was clearly very passionate about his transformation and this
topic, and he seemed exceptionally enthusiastic to discuss with students.”

The day before the screening, William & Mary
students had a chance to participate in just such a discussion when the
literary and cultural studies department hosted a talk with the director that
nearly doubled the hour of time anticipated for it. Shadyac, eschewing the
chair set out for him behind a desk opted instead to perch himself on top of a
table where he liberally dispensed high-fives, jokes, and impassioned stories
about what he called the “waking up process” he went through after his
accident.

Drawing on quotes
from Sufi mystics, the Gospel of Thomas, Albert Einstein and Jim Carrey, Shadyac
shared with the assembled students the path his journey of self-discovery had
taken, and how much he hoped that they would find paths of happiness in their
lives as well. He cautioned against following the expected “serious” road. He
discussed the danger of being “turned into the product.” But mostly, he urged
students to be the type of person that they would most want to be.

When Matthew Sonnenfeld ’12 asked for advice about
how to become a successful filmmaker, Shadyac simply replied that he would urge
him “to be the best human being you can become.”

“Always be intent on growing,” he said. “Follow your
bliss.”

After the talk, Weinberger said that the impression
he made on her went much deeper than just the advice he gave.

“I found him really approachable,” she remarked. “That
could just be because he reminds me really forcibly of my friend's dad, but
when I went up to him to talk after his conversation on Monday we high fived
and he gave me a hug.”

And, by all appearances, Shadyac was just as excited
as the students to be able to do something that makes him happy: sharing his
thoughts, his experiences, and his life.

“I’d love to take you all out for pizza for like, a
month” Shadyac said in making his goodbyes at the Kimball Tuesday night. He and
his team had an early flight out of D.C. the next morning, forcing the director
to truncate his usually 90 minute Q&A session and announce that he would
have to leave immediately after he was done speaking.

Twenty minutes later, Mintz and Pritchett finally
succeeded in pulling the filmmaker out of the Kimball’s lobby, where he was
busying himself with students, dispensing words of encouragement and hugs.